Slouching Toward the Big Lie in Ohio

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Taniel
@Taniel
A distressing piece about the politics of voting rights in Ohio, and what the establishment Republicans who are facing fire from the far-right have long already been doing:

boltsmag.org
Slouching Toward the Big Lie in Ohio - Bolts
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose faces a far-right challenger, but he too has voting rights advocates worried as he echoes Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.
12:30 PM · Mar 10, 2022

https://boltsmag.org/ohio-secretary-of-state/

In late 2019, voting rights advocates began to celebrate a federal district court win that they believed would help them get ballots to Ohioans who often don’t get to vote. The ruling would have helped voters who are eligible but stuck in jail during an election and typically denied ballots—for instance, people detained pretrial because they can’t afford bail.

But that victory proved short-lived. Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the named defendant in the lawsuit, appealed to overturn the ruling. A federal appeals court agreed in 2020, saying that voters in jail are “no more burdened than any other elector” facing unforeseen complications—similar, the court said, to someone who leaves town unexpectedly to attend a funeral.

Danielle Lang, an attorney with Campaign Legal Center who helped bring the lawsuit, says she was dismayed by LaRose’s decision to appeal. “These are folks that we know are eligible voters that the state is physically restraining from going to the polling place and voting, and they’re also not providing any alternative,” she told Bolts. “I find that appalling.”

Today, LaRose is running for a second term as secretary of state, but his profile in this campaign has been markedly different. Facing a far-right challenger who peddles conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, LaRose is getting cast as a bulwark of democracy.

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